New Town Council member Jim Merritt stood in back of St. Joseph CME Church Thursday night after the latest community meeting about Greenbridge.

No, he said, he would not have voted for the condominium towers going up on West Rosemary Street.

"Most people had no idea what 10 stories would look like," he said, when asked where the opponents were when the town approved the project. "By then it was too late," he said.

"I'm appalled how massive it's going to be in relation to the surrounding buildings and the neighborhood."

Of course, that's his neighborhood. Merritt's mother lives on McDade Street, and last winter, he and friends from Chapel Hill's black alumni association delivered holiday meals on the streets where they grew up. Of course, it wasn't "Northside" then, but smaller communities with their own names. We call it all Northside now, outsiders looking in.

About 90 people attended Thursday's meeting. Velma Perry criticized the developers for misappropriating her comments in a promotional video.

CJ Suitt, a spoken word artist, criticized me for letting developer Tim Toben see and respond to an open letter submitted to The Chapel Hill News. I explained to him the letter accused the developers of wrongdoing and we had to present both sides. (I also invited him to submit his poem to the paper.)

It's hard to tell what the meetings of United with the Northside Community Now will accomplish.

The group has been stung by accusations it's behind the anti-Greenbridge graffiti and a fake letter of apology "signed" by the developers in recent weeks.

Less known is UNC-Now's work in St. Joseph's bread ministry feeding the hungry and a community history center they are creating, the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History.

Surely some of Thursday night's rhetoric, more inflammatory than insightful, won't help. Nor can local NAACP president Eugene Farrar's counseling the crowd "to be mindful of individual communication" with the developers, though I understand his concern that "phone calls to go have lunch" could divide the community.

The project is approved, the opposition is small, and the longterm African-American home owners in the increasingly rental neighborhood are growing old.

There needs to be more communication, not less, about tax relief, support for renters, and the two sides coming together to see if there is room for both.

"We can't come to a good compromise unless we're listening to all sides," EmPOWERment Inc. director Delores Bailey said.

"If we're not at the table talking, there's no way we'll come to a positive resolution of this."

Mark Schultz is the editor of The Chapel Hill News. Contact him at 932-2003 or mschultz@nando.com